The Convention for the Suppression of the Illicit Traffic in Dangerous Drugs was a drug control treaty signed in 1936.
Harry Anslinger representing the United States attempted to add provisions to criminalize all activities – cultivation, production, manufacture and distribution – related to the use of opium, coca (and its derivatives) and cannabis for non-medical and non-scientific purposes. Other countries objected to this proposal, so the Convention's focus remained on trafficking. The U.S. considered the final treaty to be too weak, and refused to sign it, fearing that it might have to weaken its own controls to comply with the treaty. The Convention therefore had little effect, although it was the first treaty to make certain drug offenses international crimes; all the previous treaties had dealt with regulating licit drug activity.
Famous quotes containing the words convention, suppression, illicit, traffic, dangerous and/or drugs:
“By convention there is color, by convention sweetness, by
convention bitterness, but in reality there are atoms and space.”
—Democritus (c. 460–400 B.C.)
“A state that denies its citizens their basic rights becomes a danger to its neighbors as well: internal arbitrary rule will be reflected in arbitrary external relations. The suppression of public opinion, the abolition of public competition for power and its public exercise opens the way for the state power to arm itself in any way it sees fit.... A state that does not hesitate to lie to its own people will not hesitate to lie to other states.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“An illicit love affair seems sweetly old-fashioned in the age of one night stands and orgies.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Cry;—and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob’s ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.”
—Francis Thompson (1859–1907)
“The too much contemplation of these limits induces meanness. They who talk much of destiny, their birth-star, &c., are in a lower dangerous plane, and invite the evils they fear.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“To possess your soul in patience, with all the skin and some of the flesh burnt off your face and hands, is a job for a boy compared with the pains of a man who has lived pretty long in the exhilarating world that drugs or strong waters seem to create and is trying to live now in the first bald desolation created by knocking them off.”
—C.E. (Charles Edward)